Hello from Connecticut!!

As of this coming weekend my boyfriend and I will be proud owners of 4 chickens! 2 RIR, 1 Barred Rock, and 1 Ameraucana. They are all pullets who just started laying. We are getting them from a friend of ours whose flock became to large. We are new to the chicken life and will be building our coop this week, which is a 4x4 (16sqft) structure with the same amount of ground space beneath.

I had a couple questions for some of you more experienced chicken owners:

1) how often do you put ACV in the water? And how much per gallon?

2) Is it necessary to lock up their door to the bottom of the run every night?

3) Is it OK to hang the insect guards in the coop?

4) Do you have any advice that YOU with you had in the beginning?

We are so very excited and can not wait for the ladies to arrive! I will definitely be posting pictures to share with you all once we have them set up! Thank you so much!

As of this coming weekend my boyfriend and I will be proud owners of 4 chickens! 2 RIR, 1 Barred Rock, and 1 Ameraucana. They are all pullets who just started laying. We are getting them from a friend of ours whose flock became to large. We are new to the chicken life and will be building our coop this week, which is a 4x4 (16sqft) structure with the same amount of ground space beneath.

I had a couple questions for some of you more experienced chicken owners:

1) how often do you put ACV in the water? And how much per gallon?1 to 2 tablespoons ACV per gallon of water, changed and made new daily. If you have never added it before, I like to get them on it for one full week, and then only once a week there after.

2) Is it necessary to lock up their door to the bottom of the run every night?Absolutely! NEVER leave the coop door open, or unlocked. Critters of the night will always know where a chicken dinner is located and will be ready to take advantage any night.

3) Is it OK to hang the insect guards in the coop?You can hang fly strips or those fly bags, all out of reach of birds of course.

4) Do you have any advice that YOU with you had in the beginning?Over build on size of the coop as you WILL want more birds in the future. Birds pick on each other when cramped in, so make sure to give them ample room at all times.

We are so very excited and can not wait for the ladies to arrive! I will definitely be posting pictures to share with you all once we have them set up! Thank you so much!

Thanks for the reply! Very helpful! This is such a great website to get super useful information!

As with the door to the bottom graze area...that bottom area will be fenced in pretty well. I'm only curious because my boyfriend thinks keeping it open will allow too much cold air flow through the coop (in winter months)..though I think I've seen them just left open or even door-less if the area outside it is properly protected with heavy gauge chicken wire. Of course I most definitely could be wrong! Predators are pretty cleaver!

It is always better to be safe than sorry. My run is built like fort knox. Nothing aside from a giant bear could get in and even then, I would think not. LOL But I always shut the doors to the coop anyway. I couldn't sleep knowing my babies were exposed to danger.

Sounds good TwoCrows! I would kick myself if anything bad happened to them, and then I would have to hear my loving boyfriend say "TOLD YA SO!!" How do you get the girls to go inside at night, or do they naturally seek shelter come dusk?

When you first take your babies out to the coop, just lock them in for a few days. Don't let them out. After a few days, they will see this coop as their home. A safe haven and will WANT to come back to it to sleep at night. If you don't lock them in, they will get confused and won't understand where home is. So once they learn that sleeping there is where they are supposed to be, they will want to go in there at night, instead or roost in the trees or on the house roof! I always give my girls a little bed time snack, for their entertainment and to get them inside the coop. I have been doing this for years, so they have me, I mean they have been trained to go in when they see me coming. LOL They all follow me into the coop for their snacks, and I shut the door behind me. After they have eaten their snacks, got a drink of water, I get everybody on the roost bar and turn out the lights. And of course, Lock The Door both to the run and the coop!! LOL

Yes you want your chicken coop locked up every night as it only
takes one night and all that time and money is wasted by some
dog or wild predator

This Bob Cat was caught having his last supper with my
3 year old Rooster who I hatched and raised and it was
after 9 AM so not all bad things happen in the dark and
last year we bagged 1 Fox and over 20 Bob Cats several
domestic Cat's & Dogs the rough part is the price of
shells is crazy ...........

Wow! Bobcats!? We definitely have them up in this area, and we abut a huge forest so I know there's tons of beasts in there that will probably make an attempt! My other thought is to put electric fencing around the footprint of the coop just as added protection. We went to a chicken seminar and the farmers who spoke said they used this cheap solar fence that was easy to move around when needed, only thing is that you need to constantly monitor it for breaks.